I enjoy coming up with new cocktails. I’ve invented them for holidays; I’ve named them after friends; I’ve memorialized pets with them. Once you figure out the basic formula, you can improvise on it–just like cooking. You can find a bunch of basic formulas online, but the one I like to work around is
- 2 parts liquor (base spirit like gin or rye)
- 1 part liqueur or amaro
- 1/2 part citrus
- 1/2 part sweetener (simple syrup, agave, etc.; can increase if not using liqueur/amaro)
- 1-2 parts club soda or juice (optional, for summer coolers)
- 2 shakes bitters (if no amaro, or if you like your cocktails bitter)
The idea is to balance booziness, sweetness, sourness, and bitterness for your personal palate (sometimes saltiness as well in the case of tequila cocktails). So, you should skew the formula to your tastes. I like cocktails that are basically tonics–boozy and bitter. My go-to is a Sazerac–almost all cognac with a lot of bitters, no acid (but burnt lemon peel for the citrus), a good dose of absinthe, and a muddled sugar cube that ombres the drink just a bit toward sweetness as you get to the bottom. But one of the best and simplest cocktails I ever learned breaks all the rules: it’s 2 oz. of rum and 2 oz. of fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice with two strong shakes of angostura bitters–best sipped at the end of a Caribbean dock at night with the ocean a heartbeat in your ears and the stars scattered like stolen diamonds across a black-velvet sky. So, don’t take the formula as sacred.
This summer I got buried in apricots: as in, I had to shovel them off the steps with a snow shovel–after I had already dried them and frozen them and made jam with them and let the chickens eat half of them and given them away to friends. So, one evening when I made jam and had a bit left over–not enough to bother canning another jar, I used it up in this cocktail.
Apricot Pit Cocktail (recipe)
Makes one cocktail
Use a strong, beefy green tea for this–any shade-grown green (gyokuro) will do nicely; I use an outstanding kukicha gyokuro from La Societé du Thé. Or brew your usual green tea double-strength at a low temperature like 170°F for 3 minutes–so it gets strong but not too bitter. I use homemade cherry bitters to turn up the stone-fruit juju without adding sweetness, but just use Angostura or whatever you’ve got (and maybe up the amaretto a little, but not too much–you don’t want to drown out the tea). Custom bitters are super-easy to make; I’ll add a post on that topic soon.
- 1.5 oz vodka
- 2 oz brewed gyokuro green tea (double-strength or steeped double-time if you want a little extra bitterness in the cocktail)
- .75 oz lemon juice
- .25 oz amaretto
- 1 tsp cherry bitters
Combine ingredients in a cocktail shaker, add ice, shake, and strain into a martini glass or 5-oz coupe.
The Rookery 